Tag: new grad PT

Starting your first travel therapy contract is an exciting time, but there are definitely a lot of factors to consider when choosing your first contract, and mistakes to avoid once you get there! Since we covered choosing your first job recently, now we want to cover things to consider when you’re working at your first travel placement! These things apply both for new grads and experienced clinicians starting travel therapy for the first time. Some of these do have to be negotiated in advance as well, and they will come into play once you start working!

Productivity

Productivity is a dreaded word in healthcare. But, unfortunately, it is a part of our jobs as healthcare professionals. It’s important that you ask about the productivity expectations during your phone interview for the travel therapy job and consider whether the expected productivity is reasonable and realistic.

This will look different based on your discipline and setting. For example, for a SNF placement, the expectation could be anywhere from 75-95% (or potentially even higher with the new Medicare Patient Driven Payment Model changes on the horizon)! We urge you to consider whether the suggested productivity expectation is doable if you remain within ethical and legal guidelines. In general, we feel anything close to 90% or above is not realistic, especially for an evaluating therapist (PT, OT, SLP). In most cases, 85% is probably the max we would accept. For an outpatient physical therapy clinic, you might be looking for how many patients per day or per hour you are expected to see. In our experience, for an 8 hour day, between 10-14 patients is what we feel comfortable with. But, the therapist’s ability to meet these productivity standards in any setting is going to depend heavily on how the clinic is set up and how it operates.

When presented with a productivity standard that sounds high, we would encourage you to have a discussion with the manager or interviewer. Find out how the facility operates on a daily basis to help you decide if the productivity will be achievable. Are there techs or aids to assist with ancillary tasks such as setup/cleanup or patient transport? If it’s an inpatient or home health setting, is the productivity weighted based on what type of patient session is performed (evaluation, treatment, discharge, etc.)? When are the full time therapists able to complete their required documentation throughout the day? These are all important things to consider and ask during your interview.

In general, we don’t recommend you sign a contract that has the productivity standard written into the contract. This happens sometimes with SNFs, and sometimes they try to use this to say that if you drop below the written productivity, they can deduct your pay. If possible, avoid taking contracts like this, and if you see it written in a contract, talk to your recruiter to get it removed.

Once you’re on the job, be aware whether the productivity, and the various factors that affect productivity, are in line with what was discussed (and promised) during your interview. Is the clinic what you were told it would be, or is it totally different? Are you being asked to suddenly meet unrealistic productivity standards? Are things like the documentation system, support staff, and scheduling conducive to you being able to meet the productivity?

As a travel therapist, you are generally expected to be able to “hit the ground running” without much ramp up time. Sometimes facilities are able to provide more or less ramp up time or training than others, it just depends on the contract. But regardless of these expectations, you have to be honest with yourself and your supervisor. If the productivity expectations are not reasonable enough for you to meet them within your regularly scheduled hours, you need to stand up for yourself as a healthcare professional. Don’t let anyone guilt you in to stretching the limits of your ethics and legality, or your personal sanity, to meet unrealistic productivity expectations. Always remember, it’s your professional license and your quality of patient care at stake.

Working Off The Clock

Discussing productivity leads directly into our next topic, working off the clock. All too often, if the productivity standards at a facility are unrealistic and cannot truly be achieved during a standard workday, it leads to employees working off the clock to get their documentation done. For permanent employees who are on salary, there isn’t really such a thing as “working off the clock.” So, often, they will be in the habit of coming in early, staying late, working through lunch, or taking paperwork home with them. If you’re a practicing clinician, you are undoubtedly familiar with this, and as a student having gone through clinicals, you may be as well.

However, as a travel therapist, it’s important to remember that you are an hourly employee. You are paid by the hour that you work. Therefore, you should be able to complete all required work (including documentation) during your scheduled work hours. This can be difficult for employers/supervisors to cope with, because they’re used to their salaried employees. So if necessary, if this becomes an issue, it may require a conversation with your recruiter and/or your supervisor.

We encourage you to get paid for all of your time. So if the schedule and productivity expectations are not conducive to you completing your required work within your regular hours, something needs to change. This could mean a conversation about your schedule to reduce the caseload or allow built in time for paperwork. Otherwise, if you are working beyond your scheduled workday, you should be getting paid overtime.

Overtime

This leads in to the next topic. As stated above, if you’re working overtime hours, you should be getting overtime pay.

Typically as a traveler, facilities do not want to pay overtime. So, we have approached this situation in a couple different ways. Either we would let them know upfront that based on our schedule and our documentation, we would be going into overtime, and see what they say. Or, we would just do the required work, and if this required 30mins to an hour of overtime, we would then write that on our timesheet for the week. If nothing was said, we would just continue to write our hours down as we worked them, even if that meant overtime. But, often if you put down overtime hours, this will spark a conversation from your recruiter or supervisor. This is then the time when you would want to discuss the various factors of your day that make you unable to complete the required patient care and documentation within your normal hours. Then, perhaps the supervisor will work with you to make changes to your schedule, or they will agree to allow you overtime.

As far as overtime pay goes, this works a little bit differently for travel therapists. Typically, overtime pay is a standard “time and a half” on your hourly pay. However, this amount does not make sense for a traveler, because time and a half on our hourly is actually lower than our standard 40 hour pay when you account for the stipends received during our normal working hours. To learn more about overtime pay, check out this article.

The bottom line is that if you are going to be working overtime hours, you need to get compensated appropriately for the overtime hours. Hopefully you were able to negotiate an appropriate overtime rate when you signed your contract (in general for PT/OT/SLP this should be at minimum $45/hour but could be up to $85-100/hour). But, if for some reason you find yourself in a travel contract where you are actually working a lot of overtime hours, and your overtime pay is still only time and a half of your hourly, you need to discuss this with your recruiter and get it increased. Sometimes they can create an addendum to your contract to add a higher overtime rate, or they may be able to pay you a bonus at the end of the contract to compensate you for the difference in what you should have been receiving for overtime. Either way, make sure the overtime pay you are receiving is worth your time. Otherwise, don’t agree to work overtime, and instead make sure your schedule is adjusted accordingly.

Work Drama

Switching gears a bit, our next recommendation for your first contract (and all subsequent contracts!) is to avoid the work drama! As most of us healthcare professionals know, there is usually some type of work drama at any facility, whether it be interpersonal relationships, a bad manager, a bad coworker, staffing issues, or new rules and changes happening at the facility. This should be one of the best parts about working as a travel therapist. You’re only there temporarily, so you shouldn’t have to worry about this drama at work!

Not only is it good for your mental health to avoid work drama, but this recommendation will also help you to be more productive and get out of work on time. I can’t tell you how many times I made the mistake of getting caught up in the work drama and happenings of the clinic, and I ended up sitting there talking to a coworker for an extra 20 minutes, hour, hour and a half, when I should’ve been getting my notes done and getting out of there! Take our advice, and avoid the work drama as a travel therapist, and you’ll come out ahead in all respects!

Planning for Your Next Contract

The last thing we encourage you to consider during your first contract is planning for your next contract! This can be a tricky part of being a travel therapist, and this will be your first time navigating the transition. If you wait until the end of your current contract to start looking for your next contract then you’ll be way behind! We recommend that around mid-contract, you start to consider where your next move will be.

Are things going well at your current contract, and maybe you’re considering extending? Usually you can get a feel for this after the first few weeks. You might also already have an idea whether the facility might need you to extend or not. Have they found someone to cover their staffing needs already, or are they still searching? Is the caseload still high, or has it dropped and they won’t need anyone any longer? By about halfway through your contract, if you want to extend, you should start talking to your supervisor about it. Sometimes they will approach you themselves, but often you have to ask. In the past, we have usually approached the supervisor and said something along the lines of, “It’s about halfway through my contract and this is when I need to decide what my next move will be. I was wondering about your current staffing needs, and if you think you might need me longer than my 13 week contract?” This is usually a good opener to the conversation. If you do want to extend, and they need you to extend, you then go back to your recruiter and proceed with the contract extension negotiations.

If extending your contract is not an option or not something you want to do, then you need to start thinking about where you want to work next, and when you want to start. If you’re interested in going to a different state, you need to already be working on the next license. We always recommend having the license in hand before applying to a job in a certain state. Sometimes while you are already on contract with a company, they will be able to help you start the process of getting your next state license.

If you plan to start work immediately after your current contract, it’s best to start looking for your next job about 6 weeks out from your end date. We usually try to have our next contract locked down within 2 to 4 weeks of our end date. If we get down to 2 weeks from our end date, that’s when we start getting a little nervous, and also when we might consider expanding our search criteria and getting a little less picky.

This is an important factor to consider as a travel therapist on your first contract and on all subsequent contracts. 13 weeks goes by a lot faster than you think! In order to avoid a lot of unwanted (and unpaid) time off, you need to be on top of your job searches. Hopefully you have a team of recruiters that is proactive and will also be reminding you of this and helping you with the process. But we encourage you to be proactive in your job search, because ultimately you’re the only one who is going to go without work and without pay if you don’t lock in a contract.

Conclusion

While there are lots of things to think about during your first contract, these are the main ones we wanted to highlight that we think pertain to all travel therapists. There will undoubtedly be a lot of other factors, especially various clinical nuances, to consider. But, in terms of being successful as a travel therapist, the biggies are: making sure you’re not being taken advantage of in terms of productivity, not working off the clock, and overtime; as well as avoiding work drama; and planning ahead for your next contract!

We hope this information helps to set you up for success during your first travel contract! If you have questions for us, don’t hesitate to send us a message!

If you’re still in the process of getting started with travel therapy and would like recommendations for recruiters we have worked with that will have your back during your journey as a traveler, fill out this form and we will get back to you with recommendations!

1. Do your research and maintain realistic expectations.

Travel therapy is amazing… most of the time. As with anything, it can have its pros and cons. While most parts of being a travel therapist are an incredible adventure, there are still parts that aren’t always fun. It’s important that you do your research to understand all the nuances that go into being a travel therapist before jumping in. This goes for anyone looking into travel therapy, but especially new grads. If you plan to take a travel job as your first position after graduation, you need to know what to expect.

We recommend going into travel therapy with an open and adventurous mind. Not every assignment will be perfect; not every city will be your favorite; you won’t always have the easiest time with housing; there’s always a chance your contract could get cancelled; and sometimes you may question your decision to take on the life of a travel therapist. But if you go into this journey of travel therapy knowing this up front and are willing to roll with the punches for the sake of traveling the country, earning more money, and having unforgettable adventures, you will be successful and join the thousands of other healthcare travelers out there living and loving this lifestyle!

2. Connect with great travel therapy companies and recruiters.

If you talk to any travel therapist, they’ll tell you that your recruiter and company can make or break your experience with traveling! This is of utmost importance for new grads, because you will want support and mentorship as you begin to look for your first few travel jobs. You need a recruiter who gets you, your wants, and your needs as a new grad therapist. You want a recruiter who will be in your corner, going to bat for you with your best interest in mind, not just the best interest of the travel company or the client (facility). Many travel therapy companies offer some form of new graduate mentorship program, whether in the form of a mentor by phone or by placing you at “new grad friendly” facilities. These are things you will want to consider when choosing a company.

For more information on how to best choose a travel therapy company and recruiter, check out this article, or send us a message and we can give you personalized company and recruiter recommendations for you based on your situation!

3. Find a great first travel therapy job.

Your first few travel therapy jobs (or in the case of a new grad, first jobs period) will be crucial in your success as both a clinician and as a travel therapist. Sadly, we have heard horror stories of people having one terrible experience with travel therapy that turned them away from traveling again, and pushed them to take a permanent position, even though they had planned to continue traveling. This is unfortunate, and usually the result of them not knowing exactly what they were getting into on their first assignment and/or having a bad recruiter.

For your first job (or first few jobs), we recommend you work closely with your recruiter(s) to find a facility that is going to provide a supportive environment for you as a new grad. This may include having another therapist of your same discipline on staff (another PT, OT, SLP, PTA, or COTA); having more of a ramp up period in your caseload with training provided; and making sure the productivity expectations are reasonable. These are all important things to find out during your phone interview. For specific questions to ask during an interview, check out this article.

As mentioned before, a great recruiter should be able to assist you in this process of identifying supportive facilities. They may even have prior experience with facilities where they have placed new grads before that have been successful. Most importantly, a good recruiter will support your decision to decline an offer if it doesn’t sound like a good fit for you, and they will not push you into taking a job that’s not right for you just to secure a placement for themselves.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, and never stop learning.

As a new grad travel therapist, it is important that you are ready to be an independent clinician and not have your “hand held,” but at the same time you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help and mentorship when you need it. This could be from your co-workers at your facility; through the clinical liaison provided by the travel company by phone; and even by reaching out to former professors, clinical instructors, and classmates for consultation when you encounter tough clinical situations.

Also don’t forget to utilize a variety of resources (textbooks, CEU courses, websites, blogs, podcasts, Facebook networking groups, etc.) to continue learning once you start practicing on your own. Being a student working under a clinical instructor is very different than being out on your own! There is a huge learning curve when you first get started. You don’t have to know it all when you first start practicing, regardless if you choose to take a travel or a perm job right out of school!

5. Stand up for yourself and your professional license.

New grad or not, you worked very hard to get to the point of being a licensed clinician! Regardless of whether you’re in a travel job or perm job, you need to maintain integrity, be ethical, and follow the law. If you are being asked to practice in an unethical or illegal manner, you must stand up for yourself and practice the way that you feel is best. You are ultimately responsible for your actions and your license. Do not be dragged down by poor management or not-so-great co-workers.

There are many examples of how you could be placed in a bad situation where your ethics and legality are tested. For example, starting at a new clinic where they want you to sign off on documentation for patients that you haven’t seen before, or for visits that occurred before your start date. This can be a common event when you’re filling in as a traveler. It’s important you do not sign off on anything for which you were not present, including co-signing assistant notes. Another example would be feeling pressured to work off the clock to get your documentation done, or add additional time to your evaluation codes to account for documentation time, which is sadly a very common practice in many Skilled Nursing Facilities. These things are illegal, and regardless of what the other staff “has always done,” if it doesn’t feel right to you, it’s probably not! We would encourage you to reach out to an unbiased third party to discuss any potential ethical or legal questions you may have. Again that could mean reaching out to the clinical liaison by phone or to a former professor or clinical instructor.

If you’re facing ethical dilemmas or problems in your facility, don’t be afraid to talk to you director of rehabilitation or your recruiter if appropriate. You can’t always predict how a clinic will be before you start working there, but you can always get out of a bad situation if you are being asked to practice in an illegal or unethical way.

6. Work smarter, not harder.

There are some great ways you can optimize and be an efficient therapist, without always going over and beyond. This can be especially important when you’re starting out as a new grad travel therapist. Often when you start as a new grad, you want to do everything perfectly, including doing all the fancy treatment techniques and being extremely thorough in your documentation. But sometimes for the sake of time management and being successful at a new clinic, you need to go back to the basics.

Don’t overachieve on documentation so you can maintain good time management. Just make sure you document the appropriate amount, but don’t go over and beyond or be too wordy. Time management is going to be a huge key to success as a new grad travel therapist, and you definitely don’t want to be working off the clock to get notes done.

Focus on functional and effective treatments, while emphasizing building a strong patient rapport. Don’t worry too much at first about using every new fad treatment out there. Often times it’s your relationships and demeanor that matter the most to be successful and well-received, by both your patients and your co-workers, not how good you are at the latest manual therapy techniques and the coolest exercises.

Take advantage of co-treatments when applicable in an inpatient setting, to learn from your colleagues from other disciplines and get ideas. This can be extremely helpful as a new grad, especially in a travel therapy position where you’re not only learning how to be an independent practitioner, but you’re also having to learn a new location, staff, caseload, etc!

Last, do no harm! Focus on being the best therapist you can be, while ensuring you put patients’ health and safety first and foremost. It’s better to do a basic treatment, or do nothing at all, than to do something you’re uncertain about and cause harm to a patient.

Conclusion

Traveling as a new grad can be a wonderful experience and a great way to get ahead start on your finances, but it’s vital to go in well-informed and with realistic expectations about what the process will entail. Finding a great company and recruiter is paramount to your success and sanity as a travel therapist. Be picky about your first job to make sure that it’s a good fit for you and will provide you with the best opportunity to succeed. Don’t be afraid to reach out to other therapists both in person and online for help or ideas with regards to patient care, and spend some time continuing your education to be the best possible clinician. Always stand up for your ethics and protect your license. And finally, don’t burn yourself out by working long hours being a perfectionist with documentation and treatment. Of course, include the key components in your notes and provide sound treatment methods, but it’s important to be efficient with your time to have a good experience as a travel therapist.

If you have questions about anything regarding getting started with your travel therapy journey, feel free to contact us. If you need help finding a great recruiter and company to help make your travel therapy career a success, we can help you with that as well.

As travel therapists, there are a lot of opportunities to work in home health across the nation. And, the pay is usually pretty high which makes it an attractive option. It might be even more attractive for someone who is getting started as a new grad and looking at a large amount of debt to pay off. Recruiters often offer to submit new grad therapists to home health positions; but, as with everything, there are some positive and negatives to consider with home health therapy that should be taken into account before being submitted.

Here’s my take on working in home health after doing my first two travel physical therapy contracts in the setting. I will expand further on each bullet point below to give you a more comprehensive view of my thoughts, but here is an overview of the basics:

PROS:

Even as a new grad, you have will the opportunity to dramatically improve the quality of care that patients are receiving in this setting.

You can create closer relationships with patients than in most settings, and potentially make a larger impact on their personal lives than in other settings.

You can make your own schedule, or at least have a significant amount of flexibility in your schedule.

The pay is much higher than other areas of practice, although of course pay also depends on location.

CONS:

On the flip side of #1 from the “pro” list, the con in this situation is that your colleagues may not be the best and your patients may not be receiving the best care across the board.

There may be the potential for less growth as a clinician in this setting.

Sometimes there are higher productivity requirements.

There is more time spent in front of a computer than in other areas, and way more time being sedentary. The paperwork is much more intense than any other setting where I have worked.

Let’s take a closer look at the positive aspects of working in home health:

1. As a clinician, and even as a new grad, you can dramatically improve the quality of care that patients are receiving: This is in some ways a pro and a con. The pro is obvious: you can literally be a rock-star clinician in home health on day one. I was told on numerous occasions, by numerous people, that I was the best home health provider that has ever come to see the patient. That’s awesome, and very rewarding for you as a clinician, but also incredibly sad. Check out the cons list below to see the flip side of this.

2. Potential for increased quality of relationships: I have patients/caregivers that still contact me from across the country to tell me how much they appreciate the work I did for them. There is a great potential to make a larger impact in your patients’ lives than in other settings. There is nothing in healthcare that can prepare you to see how a patient moves in his/her home environment. Sometimes you must get creative to make their homes work for them. I routinely helped patients redesign their living rooms to make them safer, and I also removed two bathroom doors because the patients’ assistive device would not fit through the door and the patients could not safely access the commode without a device.

3. More flexibility in your schedule: Because you can design how your day looks with visiting each patient, it allows things like making stops to the post office or other businesses that have daytime only hours much easier to manage. It also makes it easier to design a schedule that works for you as an individual, within reason.

4. Higher pay than other settings: This depends on the location, but home health is almost always one of the highest paying settings. This is a huge pro for choosing to work in this setting. More money, more options in life.

Let’s take a closer look at the negative aspects of working in home health:

1. Other clinicians in this setting may be sub-par: As I mentioned above, sometimes you can really stand out in home health as an amazing clinician, because unfortunately sometimes the patients are receiving sub-optimal care from other clinicians. Sometimes, depending on the team you are working with, you may have to perform tasks or communication for the patient that is more appropriate for another discipline, such as nursing, social work, or another therapist, or else the patient will not get the care they deserve. For example, at one point I worked with an OT who would perform an evaluation, make goals, and on the next visit perform a discharge stating all goals were met, when the patient had not received or been trained on half of the recommended equipment. This happened with several patients. Unfortunately, when providers are paid for quantity, as is the case with most home health companies (presumably because that is how insurance pays the company), quality of care will decrease from most providers. This caused me a lot of stress because I care about my patients, and I get incredibly frustrated when I see sub-par care.

Here’s a quote that I feel is appropriate to my experience in this situation: “People that aren’t used to quality always chase quantity.”- unknown

2. Potential for less growth as a clinician: When it comes to growth as a clinician, I believe you grow by seeing and interacting with other therapists as well as performing personal research, going to conferences, and earning CEUs. In home health, although you often work with a team, you are by yourself almost all the time. I truly feel that as a physical therapist, I did not grow nearly as much in this setting as in other settings where I have worked.

3.High productivity standards are standard: This has obvious downsides. I have only taken hourly positions in home health, but the company will still try to enforce productivity standards on you. This is the toughest thing, especially with the cons listed about your potential coworkers and why you can be a “rock-star” as a new grad, which requires extra work from you if you want you to provide the best care. This combined with last con on the list (see below) are the reasons that, unfortunately, I probably won’t be doing home health anymore.

4. Lastly, the paperwork is brutal! People have tried to tell me that it is no worse than other settings, but I have worked in just about every setting between clinicals and paid positions, and it is by far the worst in my opinion. Every day I would spend half my day documenting, and that was with doing as much as possible in the home with the patient. Combine documentation time with drive time, and you have landed a sedentary profession. I chose a career with physical in the title. I don’t want to sit, and I hate computers!

Conclusion

Overall, I think home health can be a great place for the right person. If you’re very organized and don’t mind increased paperwork, you can make a huge impact in this setting right away and really feel you’ve provided a lot of value to your patients. But, there are definitely some cons to consider, and you want to make sure to ask all the right questions before going into a contract in home health.

I hope this helps you! Please feel free to reach out with any questions about home health here. I will happily look at your contract, set up a phone call to chat about home health, or provide any other assistance I can.

Stay tuned for a future post about specific questions I recommend asking during a home health interview!

How do you know when to extend a contract or when to move on? There is no definitive answer to this.

My fiancée Julia and I have extended contracts anywhere from 2 weeks in order to better accommodate our travel plans, to a full thirteen weeks at one contract. In general, we have found that we are usually ready to move on at the thirteen week point whether we extended or not. In all cases of extensions, we have been persuaded to stay partially by the facility having a desperate need for PT coverage.

In the future, we will only extend if it is in our best interest, and we will always ask for an increase in pay with an extension. Thus far we have gotten up to $200 net per week bonus pay with an extension.

Know Your Preferences

An extension is always a personal decision, and you need to know yourself. Many times a facility will approach you very early in the contract for an extension, so you need to understand your own preferences.

If you are like us, you may get an itch to leave starting about 10-12 weeks in. Extending causes that itch continue for the entire extension period.

However, many travelers, such as Jared and Whitney, find they would rather do 4-6 month contracts, or even up to 1 year so they can get comfortable with the position and location before they move on, as well as earn guaranteed money and not have to deal with the hassle of moving. If that is you, extending can be a great way to earn some more money and have a little more stability in your life.

Signs That The Facility May Want an Extension

Sometimes you can get a feel during the interview if the facility is the type to want a traveler to extend or not. You can also sometimes get a feel for whether they are likely to keep you for the duration of your contract or if there’s a possibility your contract could get cut short.

If you can find out the reason why they need a traveler in the first place, that will give you a good idea. For example, maybe it’s a rural area and they have been using travelers back to back for a year or more. In that case, there’s a good chance you could stay there longer if you wanted to. Or maybe it’s not a rural area, and they’re still using travelers back to back and can’t find a permanent employee. Maybe then you should be hunting for reasons why they can’t keep permanent staff.

On the other hand, if someone just quit and they are rapidly trying to find a permanent employee and conducting permanent interviews, there’s a chance they might cut your contract the first chance they get when someone permanent is hired. This also might not be an ideal situation for you, especially if you are traveling a long way to take the job.

It’s a good idea to feel out these things early on, as it can definitely give you a good indication of what type of situation you’re getting into as a traveler. But, don’t always fear the rotating-traveler, begging for you to extend facilities. They’re not all bad, and you could have a great experience there and want to extend.

Do you have questions about contract extensions? Send us a message and we can chat! Want to tell us about an experience you had with a contract extension? Leave a comment below!

Opportunity cost is an important economic term that most of us rarely think about. An opportunity cost is quite simply a lost benefit from choosing one option instead of another.

Opportunity Cost and Travel Therapy

Why is this important and what does it have to do with travel therapy? We’ve seen a number of travelers post about a potential job opportunity that they were passing on due to the pay being too low for them by $100 or $200 per week. They say if the pay was higher they would take the position because everything else sounded great!

So let’s analyze the opportunity cost of passing on a position without a replacement position readily available:

John is a new grad traveler and receives an offer of $1500 per week that starts 10/1. John turns down the position, stating that his minimum acceptable pay is $1650 per week because he wants to pay down his loans as fast as possible. Good news, John finds a position paying $1650 per week that starts just 2 weeks later on 10/15, and he takes this position.

Sally also is traveling with the goal of paying down her loans quickly. Sally takes the position for $1500 per week and starts 10/1.

Who makes out better financially?

Sally makes $1500 x 13 weeks= $19,500 net pay, 13 weeks after 10/1

John took 2 weeks off waiting for that bigger paycheck. 13 weeks after 13/1, John earns $1650 X 11= $18,150.

The opportunity cost for John is $19,500 – $18,150 = $1,350 in lost income, due to waiting for the higher paying position.

Conclusion

The moral of the story is that higher pay isn’t always higher pay if you have to wait to start. This is a very simplistic example, but as you can see, continually passing on “low pay” will hurt you financially in the long term if you take extra, unplanned time off.

We recommend you take the right job instead. Pay is important, but sometimes the highest paying positions can also be the least desirable positions.

If you have questions about a travel therapy position, pay packages, or need help in your travel therapy journey, please shoot us a message and we would be happy to help!

Everyone’s “why” will be very personal and may be very different. My fiancée Julia and I are traveling for the freedom it provides. We enjoy not being tied down to one geographic location and not being obligated to work 50 weeks per year. There are too many things we want to do with our lives to settle down in a permanent position.

We want to travel, not for 2 weeks each year, but long enough to immerse ourselves in the culture of a new place. We would someday like to do international mission trips as well where we can use our skills and training to help others that have tougher challenges and decreased access to appropriate healthcare.

What’s Your “Why”?

You don’t have to want the same things I want, but you should know your why. Maybe it’s to travel, maybe it’s to pay student loans off, maybe it’s for financial independence. It could be that you completed 3-4 internships and have no idea what setting you want to practice in because your profession has too many awesome options (I can relate to this)! Maybe you’re burnt out in your current position and need a change of scenery.

Whatever your why is, you hopefully take it into consideration before embarking on a traveling or permanent career decision. Your why can, and hopefully will, change as you grow as a person, but your why can always provide you with direction in your career and life.

So, what is your “why” for considering travel therapy? Shoot us a message or leave a comment below. We’d be happy to help you get started on your journey to pursuing travel therapy today.

If you are just starting out in travel therapy you may not be familiar with the concept of a “tax home.” Basically, a tax home is your primary residence, where you live and/or work. When you’re working as a travel therapist, having a tax home allows you to take housing and per diem stipends provided by travel therapy companies without having to pay taxes on them due to the stipends being a reimbursement for costs incurred at the travel assignment location.

This is a major benefit for you and greatly increases your potential total compensation, if housing costs are kept at a reasonable amount, when compared to a permanent job, where all your income is taxed. This is the main reason why “take-home” pay (otherwise known as your after-tax pay, the money that actually goes into your bank account) as a traveler is higher than pay in permanent jobs.

But, maintaining a proper tax home is a little more complicated than just saying you “have” a permanent residence.

The Basics of Maintaining a Tax Home

To be allowed to take the untaxed stipends, per IRS guidelines, you need to be able to demonstrate at least two of the following three criteria:

You must maintain a place of permanent residence and pay expenses there (i.e. rent, own/mortgage, pay bills, pay taxes, etc.) while ALSO paying expenses at your travel location. This is called “duplicating expenses.”

You must not abandon your tax home. Generally speaking, you should return there at least 30 days per year but these days don’t have to be consecutive.

You must still conduct business in the area of your tax home. For example, you have a PRN job there or maintain some type of other business there.

The third criteria is a little vague, as some interpret “conducting business” as having bank accounts and credit cards, car registration and insurance, and voter registration associated with the tax home, not specifically working in the area.

Without meeting at least 2/3 of these requirements, you would be considered an “itinerant worker,” and all of your income will be taxed.

There is nothing wrong with having all of your income taxed, and you may still come out ahead this way as compared with a regular, permanent job. But, we like to keep as much of our money as possible, so qualifying for the tax free stipends is ideal provided that maintaining your tax home isn’t so expensive that it negates the benefit.

To find out more about tax homes and all things about travel taxes, we recommend you check out the website TravelTax.com/traveler.html. (Specifically, scroll down to the section “how to keep a tax home”). This is a wonderful website where we have all learned a significant amount over the years.

What Are Some Strategies to Keeping a Tax Home?

Of course if you already own a home/have a mortgage, or rent an apartment, these can be maintained as your tax home. But this method can be more costly and also more complicated since you may not have someone to look after your place while you’re away. You may be thinking you could rent out your house while you are gone, but this is not advisable unless you specifically state in the lease agreement that you would maintain at least one room in the house as your own and you stay in that room while in the area (at least 30 days per year as mentioned above).

Perhaps a better option is renting a room out from your parents or a friend, which in our opinion is great way to maintain your tax home. Go on Craigslist, see what a comparable room rents for, and pay your family/friend to rent the room in their house. It’s also recommended that you have a contract written and signed. They will have to claim it as income on their tax returns, but they can keep the extra income to help around the home. That is the simplest way, and that is what we have been doing since starting to travel. As mentioned by Joseph Smith at Travel Tax, you ideally would also want to work in this new area for a while before traveling in order to solidify this new area as your tax home.

A more unique strategy that Julia and I are considering doing next year is house hacking for our tax home. House hacking is simply performed by purchasing a multi-unit home (duplex, triplex, quadplex), and renting out the other units, while you live in one unit. Your tenants can effectively pay your rent and pay down your mortgage at the same time, enabling you to live for free or dramatically reducing your housing costs. You can find more information on house hacking here.

Do you have a different creative way of keeping a tax home? Do you have questions about tax homes? Send us a message and we can chat!